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try-it-friday

Have y’all been to Pintester yet? It’s Sonja Foust, doing wonderful, hilarious things with pins from Pinterest. Basically, it’s Try-It Friday on steroids, any day of the week, and with hilarious results, usually because a recurring theme is, “I didn’t have what the recipe called for, so I used what I had around the house,” which is often a packet of Kool-Aid and a bottle of grain alcohol. It cracks me up every time, because she’s hilarious, and because her substitutions are cute, creative and sometimes only tangentially related to what the recipe called for. (“Recipe called for oranges. I have orange liqueur! Cheers!”) But she keeps truckin’ through, with no ego, and ends up doing some really fun things and being tots adorbs as she does them.

No, not that kind of self love. A) It wouldn’t be the first time and B) this isn’t that kind of blog. No, what I’m talking about is what this girl is talking about; having the ability to look at myself with love, accept what I am, and not associate myself with a thousand negative (and untrue) qualities I don’t possess because of the one quality I do possess.

So, this week, I’m just gonna listen, and let this chick talk. Because sister speaks the truth, and it’s important to shut up those evil voices. The most evil voice that must be squashed, however, is the one inside, and this girl has done it.

Hi, everyone! Today’s TiF is late because the shipment didn’t come in until today, and I wanted to share with you my adventures… drum roll, please… buying glasses ONLINE!

I know. It sounds crazy, and not for nothing. It is kinda crazy. I mean, these are my eyes, the ones I use to see the road when I’m driving a car that has my family in it. You can’t mess around with that… but neither can you go four years without an examination, which is what I have done. No health insurance, no money for eye exams. I could see well enough with my old glasses, so I let it go until things stabilized financially, which they have.

Anyway, it’s been an age since I’ve been bowling, but the kids got free passes from the school at the end of last year, and the other day, we decided to bowl. Why? Because, like Everest, it’s there. Here’s a picture essay to tell the story:

This is Light, rolling the ball between her legs the way kids have for… well, since people started bowling. 1950? Or so?

… and this is also Light, urging the ball to move to the right, as we all do, every time, as if the ball will look back, see us waving our arms, and say, “Oh, you wanted me to go that way? On it!” For the record… it worked.

Sweetness, showing us the new bowling craze, laziness. “Just because it’s technically a sport doesn’t mean I have to be active!” That’s the spirit!

Okay, I’ll admit… I bowled way better than I ever have, and I have no idea why. Up to this point, my best-ever real-life bowling score was maybe 65. I think it’s because of Wii bowling. I’m really good at Wii bowling.And yes, that’s the Bangles on the other screen, walking like Egyptians.

All in all, it was a great day, and we had fun. Alastair and I had sore wrists by the end of the second game, probably because we were doing it wrong, but who cares? We went BOWLING, and had an awesome time with the kids. Recommended!

One of the coping mechanisms the kids have put together for handling conflict is to decide it by rock, paper, scissors. They both enjoy the game, and whoever wins, both had fun deciding. Light likes it so much, she will often force Jenny to play it just for fun while we’re waiting for a table at a restaurant.

Somehow, over the years, they changed it… to Book, Bunny, Spider. Here, we’ve got a video of the rules for Book, Bunny, Spider, including the special circumstances when two books, bunnies, or spiders meet. The only thing you’ll miss in the video is the super-cute “la la la la la” they say when the bunnies meet and run off to play together.

I know there’s usually some form of Try It Friday on Fridays, even if it’s a quick note about how there’s no real TiF. Things have been crazy busy, life gets nuts in the summers, and I’ve been struggling just to get the essential stuff done, so it’s been a bit of a struggle to find time for the fun TiFs. I did make a commitment, however, so I feel the need to barge into this space and say, “Hey! You know that TiF that I do on Fridays? I got no TiF!”

That seems silly, though. But I feel like I made a commitment, and what kind of loser can’t keep such a simple damn commitment? One project, once a week. And then I fall into a cycle of shame and guilt which is so typical of me, and yet, is so damaging.

Alastair and I have been having a lot of discussions about shame and guilt lately. We both tend to spiral into it, for various reasons, and I look at him and say, “What in the world do you think makes you such an awful person? You’re amazing. I, however, am a monster!”

After all, I let the TiF slide. Multiple times. I mean… my god. What kind of person does that? Continue reading →

I know we’re not supposed to talk about writing here, it’s not a business space. But a big part of my ReFabbing for this year has been exactly this; remembering who I am as a writer. I lost that for a long time, and I wrote not one but two drafts of this book that got thrown away. 120,000 words over the course of a year. The book is eight months late. My editor has probably had quite enough of me and is sorry she ever signed me. She’s a wonderful, talented, smart woman and I wouldn’t blame her a bit for feeling that way. A Little Night Magic took the life out of me, and it went through so many painful revisions to get where it finally ended up that I was sure I’d lost whatever it was that I had in the first place that made me a writer. My career was over, my identity was shifting, I was no longer who I used to be. Then I proceeded to flounder through the next book, rendering the hard work she’d done on the first one pretty much useless. This next book will be so late that we’ll in essence be starting over, and that sucks for her.

At the same time, I’m standing here on the other side incredibly proud of myself. From Thanksgiving of 2008, when I first consciously acknowledged the fact that my first marriage was in a world of hurt, to now, living in a different state and blissfully remarried to a wonderful man, I changed, drastically. Many of you rode that ride with me on the Lucy March blog. And then, when that experiment was over, I disappeared. I’d opened so many veins during those years, strained so hard to change and grow and rebuild my decimated tower, that I had nothing left.